Plastic People of the Universe at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

Share via

For the most part it was the exuberant and extravagant instrumental interplay that carried the numbers in this event

When Plastic People of the Universe played at the South Bank three years ago there was a mood of unlikely celebration in the air. It was the group’s first visit to Britain, and Tom Stoppard’s play Rock’n’Roll, which documented their stoical endurance of persecution and eventual imprisonment under the communist regime of Czechoslovakia during the 1960s and 1970s, was a big West End hit. This time the band had a smart new album, Maska Masky, to promote and put on a rather slicker show in which some of the unpredictable, anarchic edges had been discreetly smoothed away.